"Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say that there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe." : Frank Zappa

Yeah, XML SUCKS BIG TIME!

No one in their right mind would ever use XML for anything at all,because it is absolutely useless for everything.

<paragraph><line>XML is the language of choice for all idiots,</line><line>and almost everyone is an Idiot,</line><line>and the only way to communicate with an idiot</line><line>is to speak the language of the idiot.</line></paragraph>

Lets rewind to mid-1981... A developer wants to look at some new-fangled database they call SQL/DS (anyone here remember that or what it became) - After designing some tables and playing around with some queries, questions were asked..

"Why does it matter if a DB engine is built on a methematical theory?"

"Why would we want to learn a foreign query language called SQL rather using nice, fast assembly language or COBOL programs?"

"Why did you just decompose our 2 nice, understandable records into 30 little tables just to join them back together again?"

and

"Why does it go so slow! ?"

Nonetheless, a new era was born - The relational era.

Relational engines were slow, and smart programmers could beat the engine every time. 5 years later the engines were a heck of alot faster, and programmers began to write a little sql and much less procedural code and they got much more work done.

So I can just smile when I see/hear folks shake their head about XML, XML data models, and/or XQuery semantics. The same eyebrows were raised not so long ago and I think the same raised eyebrows existed when mixing OO concepts and data first came on the scene.